iOS 8 Wi-Fi problems

Check out the solution i posted on another thread

Re: Ipad mini with retina wifi extremely slow/dead after ios 8 update

I have been using my iPad Air and my iPad Mini Retina on iOS 7.1 for long time. iOS 8 screwed the iPads... when connected to wifi for not more than 5 min... terribly slow... I have reset my devices, rebooted , forgot and re joined the wifi network.. iPhone 5s is good with same network...

Noticed the 2.4Ghz on my Airport Extreme 5th Gen is good compared to my 5Ghz .... They were both stuck on Channel 11 and Channel 153.. After moving the channel to Auto ... This fixed my slow wifi issue... Auto selection got my AEBS on channel 149... rebooted and noted this channel changes to 161... Both these changes did not impact wifi .. and am able to browse stream for 3 hours now...

Solution that worked for me.

Setup Airport Extreme to "Auto" for both 2.4Ghz and 5GHz........ Stop using strict channels on either...

Try turning off the Personal Hotspot.

I had the same issue and then I noticed that somehow my iPhone Personal Hotspot was turned on. Once I turned it off, the issues on both of my iPads went away. You might need to reset your iPhone--mine got so bad, I thought that it was gonna be a brick but was able to do a hard-reset on it and everything is fine now.

My post got quoted on Cnet.com. We'll see if that leads to anything.

http://www.cnet.com/news/some-ios-8-users-report-sluggish-wi-fi-shorter-battery- life/

I believe the problem lies with the wireless drivers in iOS 8. I have no proof to back that up, but I do know that Wifi is a lot more susceptible to interference and what channel is being used. If I'm close to my router the problem goes away for the most part, but I didn't need to be that close prior to updating.

I had to switch my 5 Ghz channel to get a reliable connection on my 5s running iOS 8. Otherwise it stops sending data over Wifi for up to a second (tested by sending 1024 byte packets every 100 ms). On the 2.4 Ghz side, I also tried a different channel and it's better, but still has problems with random second long dropouts periodically. Rebooting the phone seems to get things working reliably again. Not all networks have this issue. My guess is it depends on neighboring networks. My 5 Ghz network is 802.11n only (40 Mhz). My 2.4 Ghz is set to auto (20 MHz) because I have 2 legacy 802.11g devices.

To be clear, I'm not seeing slow downs per say. I can still get 40 Mbps up to 80 Mbps on speed tests, it's just the phone starts dropping Wifi packets randomly which drops throughput and can cause apps to complain of lost connection periodically.

I ran the same tests on my iPad 2 and iPhone 4s running iOS 7.1.2 and both drop packets occasionally, but no where near as badly as my iPhone 5s running iOS 8.0 does now. I'm taking at least 10 times as many.

I talked to someone who had an iPhone 6 and he said Wifi is great, but he's running an 802.11ac router. Perhaps Apple tweaked the drivers for that and somehow broke it for 802.11n and below.

I was having the same issue, although not as bad, it was still frustrating going from my 6+ back to my 5s just to watch some video clips or just browsing in general.

I attempted to restore network settings which seemed to help, but after a day of usage, it just slowed down again.

Today i came across some info on macrumors.com advising other with the same issue tried disabling the wifi in location services.

Privacy --> Location Services --> System Services.

After doing so, things seemed to have improved, but not getting the speeds i was expecting. Still an improvement.

Jumped on my router and changed the 5Ghz connection channel it from 36 (default) to the highest option i had 161.

Since doing so, i am now happy to advise that my down speed is averaging around 91Mbps and up at 23Mbps. which is about 3x faster than the speeds i was getting before (when it was working)

Im not sure if it was some sort of fluke, but its about an hour in of constant usage and so far so good.

I hope this help anyone else having the same issues.

My workarounds are only slightly magic incantations: They have worked consistently for 4 or 5 days. With the channel issue at 5GHz, I tested it by switching back to auto - problem back - then back to fixed channel 44 - works OK.

1. Force the iPad to connect via 2.4GHz, by setting up a new SSID on the router and linking to that;

2. When linking to 5GHz set the router to (in my case) channel 44 (it was on 'auto' and using channel 48)

But then I suppose we all have different routers etc.

iPad Air, WiFi only

I have an iPad Air on iOS 8. I have a BT Home Hub 5. I was noticing that my wifi kept disappearing or stopping. My fix was to disable smart channel selection and select a fixed channel on both bands (2.4 and 5Ghz) then do a reset network settings. So far it's working fine touch wood. 2.4GHz channel is 6 (1,6 or 11 recommended). 5GHz channel is 44 (36,40,44 or 48 recommended).

NSL CB wrote:

I had this problem with my ipad mini - very slow internet after IOS 8 upgrade. I tried all of the make do 'solutions' offered by others on the forum and even 'downgraded' back to 7.1.2. To my horror the problem was still there even after I downgraded so decided to contact Apple Support through their text chat service. They told me that the connection issue is due to a software conflict as part of the upgrade.

Apple guided me through the solution which is to put the device into 'recovery mode' and do a 'restore without backup' through ITunes, effectively wiping the device clean. This then installed the latest IOS 8.0.2 which is now running absolutely perfectly.

LESSON: CONTACT APPLE SUPPORT I N THE FIRST INSTANCE. They were not impressed about me doing the 'downgrade'!!

I would keep an eye on things to see if it stays fixed. I tried a restore and setup as new device when 8.0.0 a few days ago.

It worked alright for the first day or so and then the problems started happening again.

I've been having wifi drop since installed ios 8. We have 5 different ios devices in family and all of them droped out of wifi at least once in an hour.

I've been trying every suggested workaround in last 5 days - no luck until today.

Yesterday I upgraded all devices to 8.0.2 but problem persists in there as well

Thought to try once again theKonnectDavidworkaround in all devices.

Steps I did what get everything working in all devices:

1. Set network DNS: 8.8.8.8

2. Location service / Wi-Fi Networking /OFF

As I have Airport Extreme as well and I have tried different things there without luck. Now I tried some more with success.

1. Encryption WPA2

2. Both Channels active 2.4 and 5 under same SSID (3 for 2.4GHZ and 48 for 5GHz)

And for last restart router and all devices.

Hope it will work for some others as well but apperantly there is software problem from Apple what needs attention and fixing.

Thanks to KonnectDavid, cheers mate!

Okay so i had done everything except disable bluetooth. As soon as i turned bluetooth off, my 5GHz wifi connectivity was back to normal (at least for a few little while, will continue to test).

Then re-enabling bluetooth breaks my 5Ghz connection (or at least slows the downstream portion to an unusable speed, upstream is almost normal). I don't even have anything connected via bluetooth to my ipad.

I don't get it.

ios 8.0.2

WiFi on the 5GHz band has some funny usage rules for some of the channels. iOS 8 may not be implementing the rules correctly for those channels - mostly the ones below 149 that can only be autoselected because of said rules. I have an Airport Extreme ac and forced changed the channel it used from the autoselected one to channel 161. This seems to have solved the problem for me, for now – time will tell.

If changing to one of the 4 upper 5Ghz channels is a usable workaround, and so far it seems reliable to me, it means it is somewhat of a chance if a random access point will assign one of the problem channels. So far when I go to a random hotspot I get connected in the 2.4Ghz band which doesn't seem to have the problem. Autoselect can assign any of the 5Ghz channels but seems to like the under 149 ones the best in my experience (more channels there) and that seems to be the problem ones. It is also possible that the Airport Extreme ac has a software bug that is stimulated by iOS 8 and the fix may involve an update to the Airport. Hopefully with Apple engineering involved this additional information about channel selection may lead to a real fix.

That is a great suggestion. I was in the same boat until I decided to engage Apple formally about the issue. After a lot of testing, we determined:

• 2.4gHz spectrum wifi worked perfectly
• 5gHz spectrum was failing consistently
• When my router was reconfigured to use a higher 5gHz channel (161), everything is working fine now. This is across 3 iPads and 2 iPhone 5s devices that were originally dropping network connectivity consistently since upgrading to 8.2
• Logs of all troubleshooting efforts have been passed to Engineering for resolution

I fully expect that a permanent fix will be forthcoming soon, however with the resolution provided, my devices are working perfectly fine until a permanent fix is released. The more people who take positive action and open cases will help the cause - plus you may find that a good workaround may be presented that will make it a non-issue for you.

Iljja9 wrote:

I just solved our iPhone 6 (iOS 8.0.2) wifi connectivity problems by upgrading to a newer wireless router. We had a Linksys WRT160n that we bought 3-4 years ago, and just today replaced it with a Netgear AC1750. Not sure if moving from an 'n' router to an 'ac' router did the trick, or if it was something else to do with the newer router, but I'm just happy these phones finally work properly. Now both our iPhone 6's, iPhone 4s's, Kindle, and desktop all maintain great upload/download speeds (iPhone 6 using the 5 GHz signal). I can watch Netflix and YouTube again! On the older router, everything but the new iPhone 6's worked. It's been a really annoying week. For a while there we thought we owned two bricks. Pffeww.

How long have you had your new router setup for?

I have the Apple AC Time Capsule and have had problems still. I had times where it worked for several days and then all the sudden started having a bunch of problems. So it comes and goes.

I was having the same wifi problem with my iPhone 6. I changed the following settings on my router and it started working.

• Wireless Band: 5GHz
• Network Mode: 802.11a/n
• Channel Width: 20 MHz only
• Security Mode: WPA2 Personal (AES)

And here is an Apple document with a couple other settings iOS and OS X: Recommended settings for Wi-Fi routers and access points

My iPhone 5S experienced no issues with iOS 8 or 8.02. However, my (WIFI only) iPad Air is a different story. When it's set on 5GHz, it starts out at blazing speed, but within minutes it slows down to a crawl and then eventually it just sits there frozen, spinning trying to open the page I'm navigating to. But a week ago I changed from the 5GHz to the 2.4GHz, and not once has it frozen. Now mind you, the download speed is about a 1/3 slower according to Speedtest, but I never have to reboot to free things up, like I have to do when it's set to 5GHz. So I'll stay on 2.4 until the next update fixes the wifi issue.